FROM THE ORIGINAL CINEMASTERS ARCHIVE
Don’t Look Away
To be fair, tonight’s selection was an audible. I don’t know what happened but when I was compiling my list of films to watch, I included the movie “The Descent” and attributed it’s streaming nature to Amazon Prime. So when I was perusing my list of films to watch, that one jumped out off the page at me and I went to go put it on. When I arrived at Prime Video I was displeased to see that it was a rental or purchase only. I don’t know if perhaps it had been free until October hit or perhaps since I had engaged a couple free trials for other tangent services through Amazon video that it had been available through one of those. Regardless of the circumstances, I have a problem many times plunking down even $4 or $5 on a digital rental when dealing with a film that has real potential to be one I’ll like. I’ve heard so many people speak highly of the film in years past that in the back of my mind I envisioned this being a physical purchase for the collection. I know it’s silly but honestly when the blu ray is $9 new on Amazon to purchase a physical copy there’s a part of me that just can’t arbitrarily spend almost half that to rent it when I’m already anticipating the possibility of a purchase. So, in my collector brain I made a choice. I bought it on blu ray for $9. I’m sure if I wanted to do the math I could come up with percentages based on probability criteria. But I’m not in school anymore and frankly I just don’t care about those percentages in this case. If I don’t like it, I’m out $9. I’ve inadvertently purchased the same movie a handful of times. And then on top of that, I’ve also intentionally purchased additional copies of other films due to special features, upgraded technical specifications or cooler packaging. So I just did what I did. Get off my back already. But I say all that to paint the picture that my intent tonight was to watch a different film. I would like to say up front that pivoting in this audible (not an intended Amazon pun but a fun little revelation after I typed it) to a different film didn’t knowingly dissuade me from enjoying the film. I thought initially that I was just picking an off the cuff film that I hadn’t selected before. But when I went back to my list I did see that this one had made the cut initially as it stood. I’ll admit that I was a little bummed that I had set out to watch The Descent and it was no longer available which caused the adjustment, but I truly feel like it didn’t have any bearing on watching the film I did in the end. Without any further ado, lets get into this one.
So what I liked about this movie right off the bat was the creep tactics. I may workshop that naming convention but it really does kind of highlight what I’ve come to appreciate as a true driving factor for me in the pursuit of a good horror flick. At least one that qualifies to me as “scary”. As I’ve admitted before, I’m not some super macho dude who never gets scared. Many times I don’t simply because I’ve watched so many scary movies that the elements of the trade are transparent. It’s not my intention to imply that I’ve simply evolved beyond how horror movies function in some elitist, superior kind of way, either. Some movies I don’t anticipate being scared. It’s not like it says on the case of the film in a sort of 1-5 skull rating on how intense the scares are. That’s completely subjective to the audience. I recall being in the theater on opening Friday night for the movie “The Bye Bye Man”. For all intents and purposes it’s not a great movie. It has it’s moments. I’ll be kind and fair in giving the film it’s due in a slight respect. But overall it’s a pretty standard, teenage horror movie. It’s PG-13, though I believe my blu ray copy is unrated so it might be a bit spicier on your traditional scare-fare. But in theaters it was limited to what it could do. There were some solid moments here and there but overall the film relied substantially on the baser instincts of a classic fright fest. Jump scares were so abundant that at one point in the film people audibly screamed at a jump cut in the film. Not a jump scare. Just literally a cut. The scene abruptly went from pitch black dark of night to extreme bright of midday and the audience visibly jumped and audibly screamed. It got so bad that they actually turned the lights on in the middle of the film and the theater manager told everyone to calm down. I booed that man and told him to leave and put the movie back on. The bulk of my enjoyment had been transferred from the mediocrity of the film on the screen to the experience with the audience surrounding me. That’s what was keeping me alive. So the scariness of “Don’t Look Away” is not a measurable in a traditional metric, in my estimation.
If I did into what made the film creepy that I liked it was a more cerebral effect than I think I should probably give the filmmaker credit for in the end. The movie is about this evil mannequin who stalks people. I know that even typing that out seems obnoxiously stupid for a premise of a movie. And you’re not entirely incorrect. The movie never really goes into why or how this mannequin exists and why or how it stalks and kills people. It just starts doing it at the beginning of the movie and it then continues doing it throughout the movie. That’s the whole thing about this movie. The part that they really did well was how they manipulated the audience in the stalking. That’s the best part of this movie. Many times as the mannequin would come after a member of the cast you would be treated to visuals where the silhouette could be seen in the background. Sometimes you’d have a shadowed perspective on the face of the stand in. It would be there and then it would be gone. Most of the time it really did manifest itself in a tangible sort of tension that compensated for a great deal of this shortcomings in the film. The overall nightmare fuel coefficient of the mannequin in and of itself was up there. Probably a solid 8-10 range depending on the scene. So that helped. The use of light and darkness along with sometimes darting in and out of focus was done really well at times. There were scenes where it almost felt like a twisted game of “Where’s Waldo” trying to quickly track down there the mannequin was in the scene. Combined with some great musical elements that added to the mounting terror, you’d have some phenomenal moments in the film that really culminated in a satisfying haunt all around.
Unfortunately, this is about the only thing that the movie does well. Or right. Or good. Everything else about the film makes it seem like somewhere between a Shudder original to a student film to a reddit post set to film. The movie even attempts to somewhat address this by referencing “CreepyPasta” in the dialogue. That does not help. The self referential nature of the comment does nothing to aid in a “meta” kind of perspective like a “Scream” movie would take advantage of in the plot. I don’t want to but there’s a part of me that can’t help but take away some of the credibility of the truly creepy scenes in how they were shot because there’s a significant chance it was accidental. It doesn’t ruin them but I feel like the nature of this film being so bad in the end requires that I’m purposefully detrimental at times for taking what could have been a good, low budget horror flick and ruining it so badly. Probably the most egregious of all the considerable problems with this film is the acting. It really did boil down to no one in the cast having any ability to act at all. Everyone was bad. And not just bad. Atrocious. I’m not trying to imply I’m a better actor. I’ll say it outright. No need to imply. I’m a better actor. You are a better actor and I literally do not even know who you are. But you’re a better actor than everyone in the film. Pick any of them. Go ahead. Pick a character in the film. You’re a better actor than that person. You are. I’m not saying you should go be an actor. I’m not going to either. But you can enjoy knowing that you’re infinitely better at the craft of acting than anyone who was involved in this film. That’s how bad the acting is. So it was incredibly disappointing to know that this film could have been a lot better with literally anyone who was just slightly more believable as a human person. It was like riding this roller coaster where some of the visuals were set up so well and really created a tremendously frightening atmosphere and then any of the people would start to say words or move around or just be on screen and you’d immediately get disappointed again. It was emotionally draining and incredibly frustrating.
There’s a part of me that would really love to give this movie a C-. It would mean that it was good but I’m never going to watch it again. That would validate that I enjoyed the movie. Which is why I’m oscillating between D+ and D. I feel like D is the right way to go because the + on the end, even thought its a D, still seems too optimistic. So I think I’ve gotta go with just a regular D grade on this movie. I’d love to be able to tell you to check it out. There’s a big part of me that wants to because there are some great visuals in the movie. But the acting is so bad that it really does compensate negatively for the good in the film. It was a stupid movie with bad actors and you probably shouldn’t watch it. I’d like to ascribe to the people in the film that they at least tried their best and maybe worked hard but I don’t know that I can give them the benefit of the doubt. So if you have the chance to watch this one, don’t. It should be easy to avoid. I can’t imagine anyone is going to force you to watch it. And if it’s just up to you, all you have to do is not click on it ever. That’s super easy. So I think that will just about do it for this one. Remember not to watch this movie because it’s super crappy. Until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.